In his master’s thesis, “Portrait Art in the Context of Biopolitics,” painter Sinan Hasar conducted an in-depth exploration of the concept of identity, materializing this abstract subject through dozens of portraits. His lines seek the intersections between individual and collective identities, inviting the viewer to question their own sense of self. In this interview, we delve into the artist’s creative process, his thoughts on identity, and the stories behind his paintings.
Why did you choose to work on ID photos? Can you describe your intellectual and practical process?
I needed to establish a standard within my own production. When you paint, people naturally start sending selfies saying, “Draw me like this.” I’m not interested in painting the figure of someone taking a selfie behind the wheel of their new car! That’s why I decided to use ID photos. Passport photos are taken under the same rules worldwide. By narrowing the scope, I gave myself more freedom to paint as I wished without getting caught up in people’s fantasies.
Where does the story of this project originate?
As a student, I loved working on figures. I always carried a small watercolor set and a notebook in my pocket or bag. I would use people as models, quickly sketching and painting them. I started mass-producing portraits at the end of 2018 when I painted small portraits of my friends for New Year’s. After creating many quick portraits, I further narrowed my focus, limiting the color palette and concentrating more on expressions.
How does this project differ from your previous works?
I had to limit my imagery compared to before. I can even say that it transformed from a poetic expression into a holistic action. The human face can take on incredibly strange forms.
How was the process of reflecting on identity, writing a thesis on the subject, and painting portraits? How did the project take shape, and what were the milestones in your journey?
Writing a thesis requires a different kind of practice compared to painting, and I got to experience that firsthand. When I started working with Havva Altun, I was introduced to the concept of töz (essence). I learned a lot from her, and she was the one who encouraged me to continue and deepen my work with portraits.
The entire process took six years. A lot happened during that time. Our lives changed and transformed significantly. Naturally, every good or bad event left its mark on my work. My early paintings weren’t as intense, but over time, my brushstrokes sometimes became more brutal. The system itself is brutal. We live in a world with increasing surveillance, control, and enforcement. There are mechanisms that constantly monitor, regulate, and use force. These aspects are often presented as if they have positive sides, but their disturbing elements are undeniable. My project took shape in response to this reality. I saw it as an alternative form of action.
How did painting dozens of portraits affect your movement in painting? What was it like to be so immersed in faces?
Focusing on a single subject has both advantages and disadvantages. I got to know many of the people I painted much more closely. When trying to shape someone’s face, you may need to study it for hours. Doing this meant I had to put some other projects on hold. I can say that I’ve become more patient and composed. Now, I can better prioritize what I want to do.
How do you think this process will influence your future works? What changes will it bring to your art, and what are your next steps?
I hadn’t worked with oil paint for a long time. Compared to watercolor, oil painting offers more possibilities. I’ve started working on new paintings. For now, all I can say is that I will continue painting. I don’t know what will happen next either. I’m working on figures and spaces. I actually face the same challenges as every other painter—the only difference is that the content will be +21. We’ll see as I go.
HAFTW is a Berlin-based post-indie and Neue Türkische Welle band formed in 2021 by members from Turkey and Germany, whose music fuses the chaotic energy of Neukölln with the soulful melancholy of Turkish poetry. Their sound—equally cathartic and conflicting—is showcased in their single “One by One” from the upcoming album “Unknown Territories,” and they have earned recognition with releases on influential indie labels like Detriti, Cold Transmission, and Oraculo Records. Acclaimed for their dynamic live performances across Europe and featured in film and television projects, HAFTW continues to push musical boundaries while inviting audiences on a transformative cultural journey.
So to start with, why did you call the LP ‘Unknown Territories’
HAFTW: From the very beginning of our musical journey, we were placed within genres like post-punk and goth. We happened to make music in that style, worked with certain labels, and found ourselves in the goth scene, but it was never a conscious decision on our part to fit into a specific category. We have no problem with any scene or genre, but honestly, not many things about our musical journey have been planned or deliberate.
We wanted to explore, take the road less traveled, and embrace getting lost in the process. Maybe we got a bit too lost. It took us two years, after all! Haha.
Jokes aside, the moment that really shaped our perspective was when we came across a quote by David Bowie. He said something like:
“If you feel safe in the area you are working in, you are not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you do not feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you are just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
That gave us the courage to step into the unknown completely, to break free from any perceived boundaries, and to see where the music could take us.
What made you decide to start working on a LP instead of another EP or a single?
HAFTW: We felt an LP would give us the canvas to accommodate full-on discovery. A single would not allow for full-scale exploration. An EP was something we had done before, and we were expected to do another one, but that did not really suit the nature of the unknown discovery process.
It somehow also gave the possibility to build a whole map of the spheres we discovered. It felt more round if this makes sense.
For emerging artists, it is highly recommended to release singles to build a following and gain attention. Even for that reason, it felt liberating to break free and choose an LP, allowing us to create in the way that felt right to us.
What did you find to be most different about working on an LP?
HAFTW: The number of songs makes an LP a larger-scale project. The discovery-based approach of the LP also makes it difficult at times to have a clear reference point for individual songs. The purpose was to break free and get lost in the process, but that also made it harder to interpret the results of our discoveries. Overall, it took longer than expected. It could have been an ongoing process for even longer, honestly, but we needed to set a finish line somewhere to allow for new discoveries. We have more songs that will remain unreleased than the number of songs on the LP. We might release them at some point in the future.
Last but not least, collaborating with other artists, sound engineers, and technicians was a different process for this LP compared to before. It was also a unique opportunity to observe their approach to music and our songs.
How’s your relationship with LPs changed over the years? What was it like buying them back then, what is it like for you to listen to them now?
HAFTW: We always enjoyed buying LPs. It is like buying an immersive experience. You put it on more consciously and travel to this different place the artist created. Also, getting an LP gifted is great, I feel. Your friends invite you to share an experience which touched them. It is a concept from beginning to end. Everything is as it is for a reason and even though it might bring you to different destinations in itself, it is a whole. And every time you listen to it, it adds a layer of your own experience during those times. It’s a purely magical collection of different memories and emotions of different people.
For our own LP, we feel like we are archaeologists of ourselves. This is actually applicable to any artist. When the magical process of creation ends and the artist revisits their work, it can be haunting or challenging. As someone who was deeply involved in the process, your perception of the work changes. At times, it matures, develops, and grows. Other times, you might find yourself in an ongoing struggle with the piece.
We have love and compassion for our past selves. Listening to these songs and walking with them through the countless streets of Berlin over the past two years is, in a way, like embracing your past selves, revisiting memories, and watching yourselves grow. It goes beyond any categorical adjectives. It is truly a new experience.
And finally, is the LP a generational relic? Do you think it will live on with younger artists?
HAFTW: Younger generations are discovering that too. You can see that with younger artists. Maybe the medium changed so much, so the decision to listen to an LP is less conscious. It is of course more ritual to put on a vinyl and sit there to listen than to press a button for digital consumption. But this doesn’t break the idea of a concept in general.
‘’The source of creative activities is shared, while their approaches and methods differ. Focusing on one or several of these is necessary for gaining expertise in a specific field and being able to express oneself. However, the time and effort required by this process may prevent individuals from experiencing other methods and approaches. Although the formation of social groups around these fields of interest and activity is of vital importance, over time, if these groups become rigid and impermeable, it can hinder richer social and creative interactions, causing each field to remain confined within its own echo chamber.
For someone with deep knowledge and experience in a particular method, genre, or area of interest, engaging with and experiencing productions in vastly different or even seemingly opposing fields has the potential to provide new insights. These insights can, in turn, lead to a deeper understanding of their own discipline.
In essence, all these different forms of production are merely varied human experiences stemming from the same source. Therefore, what is truly worthwhile is to bring these different experiences together by creating common spaces that do not discriminate based on genre or approach—spaces where the journey of producing and learning can be lived as directly as possible, without being overshadowed by external motives.’’
Noesis Collective was founded with these thoughts and aims as a non-profit initiative. The collective launched its activities with Noetic Noises Fest #1, held on December 13–15, 2024. The festival featured performances spanning electroacoustic free improvisation, acoustic folk, experimental hip-hop, death metal, progressive rock, black metal, ancient folk music, and cabaret rock, alongside painting, sculpture, and photography exhibitions.
The collective is currently working on its upcoming events and has also launched its website. Through this platform, it aims to share works in various fields—such as writing and visual arts—and, in the long run, to establish a comprehensive space for communication and collaboration among creators.
If you would like to submit your work for publication, you can contact the collective at info@noesiscollective.com.
The festival’s aim of fostering interaction among artists from different disciplines began to take concrete form when one of the works from Kıvanç Yılmaz‘s exhibition was used as a stage decoration for black metal artist Kralizec.
From 2017-2022, Lea Drescher worked at the Berlin-based film production company mîtosfilm, which produces and distributes Kurdish stories between the Middle East and Germany. She worked as Production Manager on ‘In The Blind Spot’ by Ayşe Polat that premiered at Berlinale 2023 and received the Bronze Award for Best Film at the German Film Awards 2024 and she coordinated the Kurdish Film Festival Berlin for several editions. In 2024, she completed the M.A. program in Visual Anthropology at the Media University in Berlin with ‘This Must Be The Place’, which is her first medium-length documentary film.
‘This Must be the Place’ – somewhere between imagination and reality an anthropological film on the migration of Kyrgyz nurses to Germany
Missed the connecting flight to Bishkek. I’m annoyed because there’s no internet at the airport and because the journey seems to take forever. I keep reading Chingiz Aitmatov’s book ‘Childhood in Kyrgyzstan’. It’s actually ridiculous to think of my journey as exhausting in relation to the distance I cover in the time and the comfort with which I travel; compared to the days-long marches through the Kyrgyz mountains of little Aitmatov in the book, when he carried banknotes from village to village. He walked for hours, for days, wading through cold waters. (…) I am looking forward to seeing the mountains in Kyrgyzstan (…) The journey to Bishkek continues tonight at 8 p.m. and until then I am roaming around Istanbul in the sun, trying not to feel stressed. Suddenly the time in Bishkek seems far too short, the project overbearing, and at the same time irrelevant (…) What for? (apart from achieving a degree). Not knowing what’s ahead is giving me bad thoughts right now. Gözleme is ready.
field note, 05.04.2024, İstanbul, bistro
In spring 2024, I travel from Berlin, where I live, to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. I am researching the migration of nursing staff from Kyrgyzstan to Germany for my graduation film in Visual Anthropology. In Kyrgyzstan, I want to get to know participants of the EDUVISO program.
The company EDUVISO has been training young people as nurses for the German labour market in cooperation with medical colleges in Kyrgyzstan since 2019. The nurses are placed with employers in Saxony, eastern Germany. Care for the elderly is a particular focus. EDUVISO promotes participation in its program at high schools throughout the country.
So far, around a dozen nurses have been placed in Dresden and the nearby small town of Pirna. Hundreds more young people have joined the program. However, it is still unclear how many of them will actually migrate. It takes an enormous amount of motivation, perseverance and adaptability to go through all the steps as the process of becoming a fully recognized nursing professional in Germany takes many years and includes various exams. Passing the required German exams in particular proves to be a major challenge for many participants.
With the research in Kyrgyzstan, I want to get a closer look at how the young participants imagine their future, what challenges they face when preparing for migration and what drives them to leave their home country to work as a nurse in Germany. What perceptions of Germany do they have from afar?
A year before I leave for Bishkek, I am looking for a topic for my final project when my grandfather dies. For the first time in my life, I say goodbye to someone who is emotionally close to me. Shortly after, my grandmother moves into a retirement home. She can no longer look after herself and the family is scattered across Germany.
photo, 25.08.2023
I visit her in her new home on a sunny afternoon. She seems in quite good spirits, shows me the sunflowers on the balcony, smiles about the lively life in the neighboring courtyard and tells me about a nurse from Cameroon who takes care of her. She says that many of the nurses working here come from abroad.
A few months later, my grandmother also dies. It seems that the absence of my grandfather, who she spent most of her life with side by side, weakened her body faster.
That is how I begin to research the topic of migration and care. People come to a new country with hopes and plans for their future and here, they care for people who look back on many years behind, and who are now dependent on the support of others.
Current statistics predict a shortage of up to 690,000 care workers in Germany by 2049. Recruiting nurses from abroad is one of the strategies for closing personnel gaps. According to an analysis by the Federal Employment Agency, the proportion of care workers with a foreign nationality almost doubled between 2017 and 2022.
People from economically weaker countries migrate to work in the care sector in economically stronger countries; this is a worldwide phenomenon of capitalism (global care chains). While overall more men cross borders to find work abroad, labor migration in the care sector is predominantly female.
“By ethnoscape, I mean the landscape of people who constitute the shifting world in which we live […] as more people and groups deal with the reality of having to move or the fantasy of wanting to move.”
When I learn that EDUVISO participants are being placed in the cities of Dresden and Pirna, I can’t help but instantly think of the increasing shift to the right. In the eastern German states, formerly the GDR, right-wing parties are getting a particularly large number of votes. However, the phenomenon of the increasing shift to the right is by no means limited to those areas. Right-wing and xenophobic attitudes are on the rise in society and politics across Germany, which was particularly visible in the 2025 federal elections.
Because I am concerned about this, but also want to understand the reasons for the increasing dissatisfaction and the associated shift to the right, I travel to Pirna and get into conversation with elderly people on the streets, in senior residences and with locals in a pub in the city center. I am especially interested in their concerns and wishes with regard to the care situation in Germany and the topic of immigration.
Lea: How do you imagine your life in Pirna? S: A quiet life, not as hectic and rushed as here. (…) I hope…I mean as you hear (laughs), it’s really great in Germany, work is easier there and makes you happy.
recording 08.04.2024, Bishkek
“The nursing home wasn’t as well equipped in GDR times, but it didn’t matter, people had a decent life there. They could help with the dishes in the kitchen, do something… Nowadays… Do you know how old people are treated? I said ‘anything but a nursing home’.”
recording, 02.07.2024, Pirna
In the documentary ‘This Must Be The Place’ (45 min), I interweave the perspective of Kyrgyz nurses preparing for migration, the perspective of senior citizens and pub guests from the small town of Pirna and my own perspective as a documentary filmmaker traveling between places.
To approach the complexity around the topic of migration and care work, I engage with a variety of voices and places that I encounter throughout my research journey. Rather than focusing on a single site, as would be the case with conventional fieldwork, I involve multiple sites of observation and participation. (multi-sited ethnography)
I see the film as a mosaic of impressions that poses questions rather than provides answers.
Lea: Where would you like to live when you’re old?
Student 1: In Kyrgyzstan, of course!
Student 2: I can’t say. Time will tell.
Student 3: (grinning) To be honest, in Germany. In some home for the elderly, so you don’t torture your children and grandchildren. (some laugh)
recording, 28.04.2024, Bishkek, A2 German course
The EDUVISO participants I speak to have been learning German for several years and some have difficulties passing the exams. At the same time, the German language also plays a crucial role for me in the research process. Without the participants’ knowledge of German, verbal communication between us would not be possible for the time being; I speak neither Russian nor Kyrgyz. But I also realize how our verbal exchange is limited by language barriers. Overall, spending time together beyond interview set ups makes a significant contribution to my learning process. We get to know each other while they show me around places in the city, we visit the family in the village, take a trip to the mountains by car or listen to music.
When I arrived at the airport in Bishkek last night, T., S. and Z. (three EDUVISO participants) picked me up by car. We drove through the darkness to my apartment and they turned on various music: Kyrgyz music, English music and also the German pop song ‘Die immer lacht’ (translation: ‘The one who always laughs’ by Kerstin Ott. field note, 07.04.2025, Bishkek
Whereas the city of Pirna is also new to me, here, I approach people without getting to know each other before, spontaneously, which is possible through a shared language.
The town is situated in an idyllic location on the Elbe river, surrounded by hills. While my gaze kept falling on the mountains, animals and flowers while filming in Kyrgyzstan, I pay more attention to text and symbolism in Pirna, as I speak the language and am familiar with the socio-political context. Election posters and snippets of conversation from people passing by catch my attention.
I walk with G. and S. (*Kyrgyz nurses who just arrived in Pirna some weeks ago) towards the river. A few young people on bicycles pass by. One of the boys starts to sing “Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus” (“Foreigners out, Germany for the Germans”) to the beat of “L’amour toujours” by Gigi D’Agostino.
field note, 02.06.2024, Pirna
Over the course of six weeks, Bishkek became more familiar to me, and I kept returning to certain places. Especially where there are animals to watch; pigeons bathe in the almost dried-up riverbed, and one afternoon I observe small puppies and their mother in the bushes next to the water. The babies may have been born just a few days ago. Squirrels hop around people in the park.
Somehow, the presence of the animals makes me feel comfortable and relaxed as I try to engage with a new place and new people.
Later, in Pirna, I meet two of the nurses who have just arrived. After an interview, we watch the geese along the river and they remember the geese in Kyrgyzstan. Various people, old and young, seem to enjoy hanging out here among the cackling animals. For a short moment, it feels like a place can be shared by living beings regardless of language.
G: I have both feelings. Worried and happy and a little sad. Because soon I will fly to Germany and yes, I am afraid to start a new life in Germany. But I hope everything will be fine.
Kanye Ost aka Karel Ott aka KO is born in East-Berlin (German Democratic Republic) in 1986. Rapper for Ostberlin Androgyn and singer and songwriter for Bistro Palme.
Looking at your musical journey, we see a striking transformation—from a “guitar guy” performing at reading circles to a rising rap star. What sparked this radical shift? Can you take us through the key moments that shaped your evolution as an artist?
As a small child, I loved singing, especially the “Biene Maja” title melody by Karel Gott in front of my family. I probably received too much positive feedback from my parents and my Schlager-music-loving grandmother for that – so even as a small child, I started to dream about being a singer. When I was 12, I bought my first guitar and started writing my first songs. Since I was 16, I have played in different rock bands, usually writing lyrics, singing, and playing guitar.
In 2010, my friends Sarah Bosetti, Daniel Hoth, Karsten Lampe, and I started the reading stage “Couchpoetos,” where my friends performed their newest poetry-slam texts, and I regularly performed my newest songs as the “guitar guy” once or twice a month.
In 2016, Daniel and I were chilling and smoking a lot, and we came up with the idea of performing two rap songs as “Ostberlin Androgyn” on our Couchpoetos stage. At first, it was just an easy-going idea for fun, but the audience’s reaction showed us clearly that the idea of an Ostberlin Androgyn rap crew was special and unique and that we could perform different parts of our artistic identities in a more radical way than before. The audience celebrated us and taught us to take ourselves seriously as Ostberlin Androgyn.
So, we decided to make it a real project and started recording our first EP. We released the EP in 2017, and by 2018, we already had a gig at Fusion Festival, everything happened very quickly back then.
Credit: Sebastian Hermann
You’ve described rap as a liberating force, a genre where you truly felt the flow and freedom. What was it about rap that resonated with you so deeply? How did things take off so quickly once you embraced it? And how did Ostberlin Androgyn come together as a project? Can you share the story behind the group’s vision and your role as Kanye Ost?
I’ve been listening to rap since I was 16, even though my main musical interests at the time were punk and rock. The German rap I listened to was pretty raw and intense—Westberlin Maskulin with Kool Savas and Taktloss, Aggro Berlin with Sido, B-Tight, Bushido and Fler, as well as MOR, Prinz Porno, and later KIZ. I was mainly into underground rap from West Berlin. I liked its roughness and direct messaging. The lyrical quality of late ‘90s West Berlin battle rap was much sharper and more intelligent than the more popular fun or conscious hip-hop coming out of Hamburg and Stuttgart at the time.
The only problem was the content. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing this music with my Antifa friends because of the often violent, sexist, and homophobic lyrics in West Berlin underground rap. Even though these artists aimed to provoke and used harsh street language as part of the battle aesthetic, sometimes ironically, it still reinforced problematic ideas. But despite that, I preferred this style of rap because of its street credibility, Berlin-style harshness, and underground appeal compared to other, more boring German rap.
We came up with the name Ostberlin Androgyn as a direct play on Westberlin Maskulin. Both Daniel and I grew up in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, a Plattenbau neighborhood from the GDR era, so “Ostberlin” was an important part of our identity. Since we were both men, we couldn’t just flip “Maskulin” into “Feminin,” so we chose “Androgyn” instead, representing a softer and more fluid idea of masculinity.
Once we had Ostberlin Androgyn as our crew name, we started looking for fitting rapper alter egos. My name, Kanye Ost, came to me almost instantly—I liked Kanye West’s unique production and rap style, and the name followed the same reversal principle as our crew’s name (…and let’s not talk about today’s Kanye West, hehe). Daniel’s alter ego, Gregor Easy, was actually the result of a Freudian slip—a family member meant to mention DIE LINKE politician Gregor Gysi but accidentally left out a “G,” and Gregor Easy was born!
Even before writing our first rap lyrics, we had already chosen our crew name and alter egos. Content-wise, we focused on a post-historical perspective on our GDR identities. Gregor Easy’s father was a member of the GDR’s military, the Nationale Volksarmee (NVA), and drank himself to death after the fall of the Berlin Wall and West Germany’s takeover of the former GDR. My parents saw themselves as socialist pioneers when they moved to East Berlin. I was born in 1986 and grew up with a father who worked for the GDR secret service, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Stasi), and a mother who studied Marxism-Leninism and Russian to become a teacher.
Many people from the former GDR had major difficulties finding orientation in a capitalist world they had to adapt to since 1990. These issues, along with some ironic and nostalgic views on our own history, are central points of our lyrics.
Another important aspect of our content is that we always wanted to be direct and “hard” without being toxic men – so we don’t use sexist or homophobic language and prefer to diss jerks, rich kids, and other annoying people instead of, for example, women or gay people.
Gregor Easy’s funny way of dissing assholes and my honest lyrics about my history of drug use gave us some street credibility, so that people could take us seriously as an underground rap crew.
When we released our first EP on vinyl in 2017, we produced a music video for our track “Takeover 2017,” and we asked our friend, the producer Spoke, to make it. During the shooting, we felt a strong connection and good vibes. Spoke was already producing beats back then, and afterward, Spoke joined our crew as a member and producer from 2018 to 2021.
Spoke organized a gig for us at Freilauf Festival in 2017, and there we met our future booker, Donna from eq:booking agency, who fell in love with our music and organized many gigs for us.
In the following years, we released some tapes and vinyl records (the last one, “Im Osten nichts Neues,” was released on Audiolith, a record label from Hamburg), and we went on tour, playing lots of gigs. Then the Corona pandemic came and devastated underground music and club culture in Germany (including us). These days, we are working on a new album again and hope to release it by the end of 2025.
Your other project, Bistro Palme, explores a completely different genre. What draws you to exist in two musical worlds? Do you feel a different creative energy in each, or do they feed into each other in unexpected ways?
As a listener, I have always been open to all styles of music, and as an artist, I have usually been involved in two or three different projects at the same time. So, for me, there isn’t really a division between separate musical worlds, there is just one big musical space where you can express different emotions through different styles.
As a person, you don’t wake up every day feeling the same way or listening to the same song over and over. People experience a range of emotions, go through different phases in life. Some days, you might feel like listening to death metal; other days, you might be in the mood for hyperpop. That doesn’t change who you are. As an artist, it’s the same for me: I have different emotions, and I can express myself through different musical styles, all as one and the same artist.
To be honest, this approach feels completely natural to me, so I don’t really struggle with the idea of being both a rapper in an underground crew and a singer in a playful rock big band at the same time.
When I started rapping at the age of 30, I was shocked by how free I felt on stage; without a guitar and without that typical “sad white guy with a guitar” image. At first, I really wanted to focus on Ostberlin Androgyn and was happy that I didn’t have to play the guitar. But composing songs on the guitar never really stopped for me, and Bistro Palme became the project where I could channel those songs. I started it with friends at almost the same time as Ostberlin Androgyn. However, since Bistro Palme consists of eight musicians (playing double bass, cello, violin, guitar, saxophone, flutes, drums, and keyboards), the production and release process takes much longer and requires more energy. As a result, Bistro Palme has had less output compared to Ostberlin Androgyn, but it has always existed. Just a little more “hidden” in the background. These days, my focus has shifted back towards Bistro Palme. We released our first album, Es geht vorab!, on vinyl in November 2024, and we’re playing live quite frequently.
In Ostberlin Androgyn, I am “Kanye Ost,” and in Bistro Palme, I am “Karel Ott”, so in both projects, I am still “KO.” There is a strong connection between these two personas, but of course, they are different on stage. Kanye Ost is a little more wild, chaotic, humorous, and self-destructive, while Karel Ott is a little more mature, reflective, and philosophical.
So, in the end, it’s not about different creative energies. It‘s all one and the same creative force that I put into both projects. The difference is more about the “mode” I am in at a given time or the particular focus I choose.
Another element that connects Ostberlin Androgyn and Bistro Palme is the use of radically honest lyrics. In pop music, there is often a tendency to sugarcoat life and the world we live in—there’s a lot of romanticizing and feel-good content. I like the idea of filling that kind of music with real-life struggles and true stories. For example, making a sweet, melodic song about depression and how even a crying face can have beauty, or writing a rap track about people who died at the Berlin Wall. Breaking taboos, addressing both personal and societal trauma, and talking about struggles that most people experience but rarely discuss, that’s what interests me as an artist… and as someone with some good therapy experience! 😀
Credit: Sebastian Hermann
East Berlin’s influence is unmistakable in your work—it’s woven into your artistic identity. How did growing up in East Berlin shape your music, your lyrics, and your creative vision?
First of all, there was always a huge gap between my personal childhood memories (as well as the mostly positive way my parents talk and think about socialism and life in the GDR) on the one hand, and what we had to read in school during my later (capitalist) childhood about the GDR and Stasi on the other hand. The GDR was presented as a totalitarian system similar to National Socialism. In movies and media, people who worked at the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit were usually portrayed as cold and inherently bad figures. Some members of my family worked for the Stasi, and I knew from my own experience that they were not the monsters that capitalist victory narratives described them as.
At the same time, from school, media, and contemporary witnesses, I learned that the overly positive view my family had of the GDR was also not super close to reality. I felt that the truth must be somewhere in between, and I have been searching for it my whole life. That search for truth has definitely shaped my artistic views – I have always felt that writing songs brings me closer to it than studying ever could.
I feel like my generation has a unique perspective on upheaval and the clash of different systems. We were born in East Berlin, spent our early childhood in the socialist German Democratic Republic, and then experienced “Die Wende” in 1990, which brought capitalism crashing into our society and radically changed everyone’s life. People lost their jobs and parts of their identities; many took their own lives because they could no longer understand the world around them. The generation before mine was fully shaped by a socialist mindset in a socialist world. The generation after mine grew up entirely in a capitalist world. But my generation experienced both, and we learned that a system can collapse, yet life still goes on. That knowledge—of resilience and survival—probably plays a central role in my art. For us, catastrophe and breakdown were normal, which may explain my tendency to explore uneasy topics.
After reunification, companies and individuals from West Germany easily took advantage of East Germans economically. Most people from the GDR had no real understanding of how the harsh “free” market worked—getting some Deutsche Marks always seemed like a good deal. Today, nearly all houses, businesses, and industrial structures in the former GDR are owned by Western companies or private individuals. Even in 2025, people in East Germany still earn around 15% less for the same work compared to those in the West. Being East German is still often associated with a sense of injustice and being positioned as the loser. Having less power and money than others, yet still trying to make my voice heard and reclaim space, is probably a major motivation for my art as well.
When I started school in 1993 in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, my friends and I collected Coca-Cola cans with special Bundesliga logos and proudly displayed that capitalist trash on top of our bedroom wardrobes. In the GDR, we didn’t have much material wealth, so even Coca-Cola cans seemed valuable to us. Many things were scarce in the GDR, so if you had to repair your car, you had to improvise. That spirit of improvisation—of trial and error until you hopefully find a solution—is exactly how I make music. This is probably also why I produce different styles of music—there is no single way to find answers or solutions, so I try different approaches at the same time.
Migrant rappers, especially Turkish-German artists, have played a crucial role in shaping German rap as we know it today. Do you think German rap has always been intercultural, or was there a time when Turkish-German artists were on the fringes of the scene? Do you see a divide between the mainstream German rap scene and Turkish-German rap, or have those boundaries blurred over time?
As I mentioned before, when I first started listening to German rap, I was mainly drawn to battle rap from West Berlin, which was dominated by migrant rappers, including German-Turkish artist Kool Savas. Ironically, in my view, it was actually white German artists who were on the fringes of the scene and had to carve out their own place within the German battle rap bubble. In my eyes, German rap was primarily created and shaped by migrant artists.
The first German rap track I ever listened to was Fremd im eigenen Land (“Foreign in My Own Country”) by the Heidelberg-based crew Advanced Chemistry, released in 1992. In the song, Torch and Toni-L rap about their migrant backgrounds, highlighting how simply holding a German passport didn’t make them feel German, as they still faced discrimination for being migrants in Germany.
From a historical perspective, I believe German rap has always been driven by artists with migrant backgrounds. Over the years, the genre has evolved and diversified significantly to the point where today, anyone can become a rapper. In terms of success, having a migrant background no longer plays as decisive a role as it once did.
Many of the most successful German rap artists in recent years come from migrant backgrounds. Haftbefehl is Kurdish, Shirin David has Lithuanian and Iranian roots, Eko Fresh is of Turkish descent, Capital Bra is Ukrainian, and Bushido is German-Tunisian—the list goes on.
Hip-hop is probably the only music scene in Germany that authentically represents migrant perspectives and experiences, both in quality and quantity, in a way that truly reflects the realities of German society.
Sajad couldn’t visit Istanbul again because, even though he had documents proving his refugee status in Germany and a valid travel document, the Turkish Consulate did not issue him a visa. Consequently, no Turkish city appears in this film; however, that only prevented Sajad’s physical visit to Turkey—thoughts know no borders, and visas cannot be issued for them. Sajad decided to complete the series in our magazine by writing an essay on his time in Turkey.
Editor’s Note
After 18 hours of walking at night, I arrived in the city of Iğdır, Turkey. I stayed in Iğdır for only a week, but I saw nothing of the city because I was confined to a small, dark room provided by the smuggler. For the first three days, all I wanted to do was sleep, as ever since I had left Kabul, I had spent my time either walking, running, or traveling in the back of pickup trucks.
On the sixth day, the smuggler put us on a bus. It was a brand-new, luxurious bus with clean seats. After such a long journey, the moment I sat on those soft, clean seats, I fell asleep.
After six hours, the assistant driver woke everyone up and told us to get off the bus and eat at a nearby hotel. Having spent a month and a half surviving on bread and yogurt, I was thrilled by the aroma of kebabs coming from the hotel. After enjoying a delicious meal, we got back on the bus. However, this time, they made me sit in the aisle, saying that my turn for a seat had ended. If I wanted to sit properly again, I had to pay 100 lira—but I had already spent all my money on kebabs.
Around 8 PM, we arrived at Esenler Bus Terminal in Istanbul. For the first time, I saw beautiful women with elegant figures, their legs visible beneath short skirts. I had only ever seen such sights on television before.
In the vast city of Istanbul, I had to find a new smuggler to take me to Europe. After some calls to friends in Kabul, I was put in touch with an uncle of one of them, who was a smuggler. I went to his house, where I was once again placed in a small room with ten other Afghan migrants. But this time, I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t tired anymore. It was as if I had never taken a long journey at all. I just wanted to go outside and explore the beautiful city of Istanbul—a city filled with the sound of seagulls and taxi horns, like Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1, but played in the rhythm of seagulls and honking cabs.
The next day, as I prepared to leave the smuggler’s house to explore the city, one of the Afghan boys warned me, “Don’t make that mistake. If the police catch you, they’ll deport you back to Afghanistan.”
Hearing that, fear gripped me. I thought to myself: “You idiot, you didn’t come here for fun and sightseeing. You came to reach Europe.”
Four days later, I got on another smuggler’s bus, heading toward Izmir, where I planned to take a boat to Europe.
I have been a migrant since I was four years old, always afraid of the police and borders. I never had a stable home or school; I was always on the run.
When I finally got my own small room in Berlin in 2019, I spent two years living in constant fear that I would have to leave—that this place wasn’t really mine.
So this summer, I made a comic book with Allah and the AI. Let me explain.
Allah is the Arabic word for god, but because of the way the Islamic faith is structured; it’s most often used in reference to the one true God of the Abrahamic religions, rather than referring to any other deity of any other belief system like the word god does in English. Allah, aside from being the creator of all life and the known universe; is also the author of Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. This is significant. Muslims believe that the words in the Qur’an are the words of Allah itself.
When you read the book, you can see how that works out. Allah talks in the first person plural for most of the time, describing in detail what their wishes are and what they expect from their followers. Allah also takes direct credit for all the Abrahamic belief system, whether it be Judaism or the pre-Islamic Hanifism. The book is very clear: All the prophets from Moses to Joseph worshipped the same god, tried to spread the same set of instructions but the message got corrupted by the greed and frailty of men. So the Qur’an is the final book. Mohammed is the final Abrahamic prophet. Allah has spoken its final word.
So. I made a comic book with Allah and the AI. Once again, let me explain.
Midjourney is an artificial intelligence program that creates images from textual descriptions, which is a fancy way of saying that it’s a robot who turns words into images. It’s not too dissimilar to other text-to-image AI programs like Stable Diffusion or DALL-E in its functionality: You give the robot a prompt, robot parses that prompt and generates an image based on the dataset it’s using. Where Midjourney feels different is how it seems to be able to convey the sense of emotion. The prompts you give to Midjourney turn into seemingly more touching images, in seemingly purposeful color-generation and seemingly deliberate compositional choices. Where other text-to-image AI programs seek to turn the words into images in a more representational manner; Midjourney is also comfortable dealing in the abstract. You don’t just have to ask the robot to make you a picture of Napoleon Bonaparte riding a shark through lava, you can also just ask the robot to make you a picture of that dread you feel after an uncertain breakup. Ask the robot to paint an idiom. Feed the robot some lines from your favorite poem.
Or give it the words of Allah.
So. This summer. Me, Allah and the AI. We made a comic book.
I was sitting on my balcony in Leipzig when I suddenly decided to read the Qur’an. I was reading about the representation of other prophets in the Qur’an, you see; and I found out that there was a whole surah, or chapter named after Mary, mother of Jesus; talking about not only Mary and Jesus but also about Moses and Joseph and Jacob and Isaac and Ishmael and Adam and Zecheriah and Noah; so in essence, all the Abrahamic protagonists. With an excitement not unlike the one I feel when I’m about to watch a superhero movie where characters from other movies get together, I started to read.
Then as I read I wondered, what would the robot make of this?
Here’s what I did: I compared and contrasted passable English translations of the Qur’an. I collected the ayet, or the verses of the surah Mary dealing with the birth of Jesus. I then fed those verses to the robot. Midjourney gives you four options with each prompt and can further work on an option should you choose to. So I curated the images accordingly. Then finally, I found a comic-book looking free font on Dafont, and put the corresponding ayah on the image the robot made of it and placed the images as if they were panels of a comic book.
So. Words by Allah. Art by the AI. Edited by a human being. Allah, AI and I made a comic book together.
The summer of Her Absence Fill the World was an interesting one.
The band; which were featured in the previous issues of DolmusXpress, went on its first three live shows throughout the course of last summer.
First one was in a music festival called Art Carnivale in Steendam, Netherlands.
Second one was in a club called Christa Kupfer, located on Maybachufer, Berlin.
And the last one was at a streetfest called Kiezfest, on Mainzer Straße; in Neukölln.
These are three very different settings to play your first three gigs in, so it became impossible not to wonder how it felt for the band.
We met up over Discord, and they answered four simple questions.
This was the first one.
Which one was the most challenging?
Sascha: I think Kiezfest, for me. I felt a bit strange about the audience, because it was a moving audience. If you’re feeling a bit nervous maybe, the moving audience will be more challenging in my opinion because you will not get a direct feedback regarding whether they like it or not. They kind of just ignore when they pass through.
Kubi: I was thinking the first one was really challenging, but then listening to what Sascha was saying and then I realized that yeah actually the last one was challenging in a different way because people are moving. It’s hard to focus, it’s really hard to build an atmosphere playing on the street.
Kubi then adds,
Kubi: For me they were all actually challenging in different directions. But it’s good to be challenged, right?
Sascha: I think also the feeling you got afterwards, when you look at it retrospectively; it’s the balance of anxieties or challenges you had before compared to the reward you feel afterwards and for that I think the last one was the most challenging, because the reward wasn’t balancing enough.
Which very gratefully brings us to the second question. Which one was the most fulfilling?
Sascha: The first will always be super special and beautiful, and it felt very fulfilling. The one in the club too, they were fulfilling in different ways. I can’t really pick between those two.
Kubi: It’s really hard to rank them. The first one was super magical. It was our first concert, first of all. Also we were weirdly headlining. In our first concert. So it was extra pressure and it was a bit ridiculous but it was amazing. We prepared for months for that concert.
But I would say Christa Kupfer was really special for me too because Christa Kupfer is home to me and we were presenting our project to our friends. Our family I would say. Because of that it was like a launch for us.
The conversation then drifts into how the experience of a live performance is split in two ways: The preparation and the act. That brings us to our third question.
Which one was the most exciting?
Sascha: I think they were differently exciting. In the festival there was a more surprising and nice interaction with the people, but the club was exciting as well. It’s nice to see how music works in different surroundings and moods and where it can bring you emotionally in different settings. For example the Kiezfest was also exciting in this way, maybe exciting doesn’t have to mean positive all the time. It was exciting to see what’s happening there, which songs are working where and where they bring you emotionally.
Kubi: I would agree with that. We had three different concerts in three different settings. We already have more gigs scheduled and what we have in the future will either be this or that. I mean I can’t imagine a different setting than a festival, or a club or a street festival.
So we arrive at the final question.
Which one would they like to do again now that they know what they know?
Sascha: I think I would do the first two again. Not to make it better but it was super nice. I think I would feel a bit more relaxed so I can enjoy it a bit more. The last one was good practice as a performing artist, to play in front of an audience which is not giving you direct attention. I think even if it’s just one person, even if you feel maybe disappointed about it or disappointed about their reaction; I think it’s a good practice to play in front of them because this is your job in this moment. I think it’s good, even though it feels maybe weird.
Kubi: Seriously, I’ll be really honest: I wouldn’t go back to any of them. They were amazing but they were once-in-a-lifetime things. But I have a wish. If I really had a magical power to go back I would go to our first concert as an audience member. I would love to experience that. I think at the end of the day it was an interaction and it doesn’t matter which end you are at -either the audience or the band. In the concert there were moments where we felt unified and I enjoyed it but I would enjoy it also from the audience perspective.
Doğu Topaçlıoğlu’s exhibition ‘’Appropriation’’ will be held in Ka between 15-22 February. The exhibition consists of sonic arrangements and aims to present an alternative perception of plasticity. The artist works on the sound’s ability to make objective and situational changes in ontological state of the object; while creating relations between psycho-acoustic possibilities, sculpture and drawing.
Doğu was born in 1989 to an avid reader mother and a painter father. Until 7 years old, he spent considerable time together with his grandmother. During this time, he used to collect dirt from the street to bring home and hid under the carpet. He collected rain drops in his mouth. He moved the paintings on his grandmother’s walls and scratched the wall behind them. Later he would describe this naive journey as a natural occurrence of automated behavior, a type of behavior one would develop when trying to perceive life as it is. It appears that the elements of the house he was born in, the dirt under the carpet, together with the scent of paint and thinner steered him towards his journey, although did not pick the direction. Graduating from Ankara Anatolian High School Of Fine Arts and entering Hacettepe University Department Of Sculpture were only two stops on this long journey; separated by time, united in direction. Doğu is chasing after a feeling, a thrill; which he doesn’t and doesn’t want to put an end to it. This is why he doesn’t seem to separate his life from his art. The way he is searching for himself, and the way he can’t seem to catch the speed of his own mind; reminds me of a saying I heard in an African narrative:
“We are going fast, and our souls are staying behind.”
Doğu likes to share the excitement of the process of not knowing what his next piece or material will be. To understand his works, one should consider the concepts of timelessness and sense of anachronism. Just like how he tried to understand what does inside, outside and their borders mean at an early age; he is now observing the objects, events, sounds, notion and intersections with the same excitement and curiosity. He is finding his own mutual reflexes under these environments and conditions; resulting in his own language. As if Doğu had designed a machine and any input that goes in, goes out translated in his language. As if one might put a musical note into that machine and Doğu would listen it enough so that the note would start to come out, harboring all other notes. His interaction with music often transitions into the environment. Doğu doesn’t see much of a border in between. When he is composing; he often drifts from the original idea and discovers countless new patterns, only to be turned back to the original idea. He sees this journey as a must to go back to the point of origin.
This biography came out as a transformative idea to accompany his evolving journey. Instead of listing the events of his life linearly, I offered to capture a few pieces from the time that brought him here. I wanted to leave the reader a space to play with, so they can be a part of this writing. This writing is avoiding the concrete, it is unsure, and it is still on a journey searching for itself. It will be written once more together in separate times with every reader and will never be complete.
Hello Tolga, first of all, do you have a name for the work you do? Did you put names to them?
These are the products of my perspective, which can be called the expression of my mood when I sit to work on my computer at that moment.
You usually work with abstract ideas, what inspires you?
In general, what I think about doing, producing, is about what is happening in life, or changes that are happening in the environment, rather than my own life. I mean, I filter, what life throws at me, through my filter. Nature, history, other works, architecture, technology, in short, the visual data I encounter in life inspire me. I have been interested in visuals since childhood, in fact, this situation started with photography, evolved into cinema over time, after studying cinema and television, I realized that it did not allow me to express myself the way I wanted, and finally I met 3D, and I found sort of a freedom that I seeked. Light, angle, color I was excited to be able to adjust every conceivable variable as I wanted and I started to deepen in this area.
The biggest point is doing the work from the computer. Are there various programs to do this work? Or are you using a specific program?
These are technologies that are developing every day. There is no end to learning a program, in fact, several programs can be used for many different aspects of the work. Many people also use more than one program. If you are looking for an alternative style, it is useful to use more than one program.
https://vimeo.com/779273121
Do you use more than one program in the same project?
Yes. I think that Maya, Blender and Houidini are useful programs, these are the first ones that come to mind. I mainly use Maya, After Effects and Premier are also involved, or if I’m doing an audio reactive work, I use Resolume. I usually use more than one program. I started this journey with Maya, with courses from the Internet, and of course I also learned on my own. But as I said, there is no end, the deeper you go, the deeper it gets. My learning process is not over either. In fact, production is developing as you produce. I think the main point is to discover what to produce with the inputs we get after learning to use a program. I am also at this interrogation point, in fact, I want to explore my own style and deepen in it. It’s a playground for me. I have been doing this work for two years and many artists I have been inspired by have been instrumental in starting the process. Most of the work I do is also related to music, the fact that music is a texture in my work also allows me to decipher a different depth in the work I produce. When music is combined with visual elements, very striking results come out. That I’m after. I really like to appeal to different senses. These feelings and the combination of these elements stand out in the work we have done together with Her Absence Fill the World. In other words, the music I listen to, the images engraved in my mind, the whole of what I see and feel while doing the work constitute the essence of the work.
You mentioned Her Absence Fill the World, the work you did was very appreciated. How was that, how did it make you feel?
When they said that they wanted to make a music video for their song, I got excited, it was a pleasure to work together with Kubi and Sascha. I liked the song very much at first, ideas started to come to my mind immediately. They also had a lot of ideas, but they gave me a nice space to put forward what I had in my head, and it was also really nice. So I was able to convey my feelings, of course, there were also items that they specifically wanted, for example, the green door. What they wanted and my feelings came together, and this beautiful work came out. On top of that, we carried out the entire process from our computers, they from Berlin, and I, from Ankara. We have taken the process from the beginning many times, my computer has changed, improved, as a result, we have started to get more beautiful and realistic textures. The whole process was like an adventure. It was also pleasant to watch the process develop and change in itself. There were very nice reactions, it was my first music video experience, the whole process and the aftermath were very enjoyable. This work has given me a lot of inspiration, it has also been an inspiration for me to look into more works like this.
What are you working on these days?
These days, I am working on a project where I aim to produce audio reactive visuals by combining them with the audio files I have produced. On the other hand, I have started to produce short loops in motion graphics. I will soon start sharing my works in this field under a different name. Apart from all these, I still continue to learn, at the same time, I would like to thank DolmuşXpress and everyone who contributed. We had a lot of fun, I hope all readers will share the same pleasure with us.
Tolga Ateş
Interview: Yigitcan Erdoğan, Ilgın Nehir Akfırat
Translation from Turkish Original: Ilgın Nehir Akfırat
